We all have friends who send amusing pictures and fun facts around the web. (Guilty and loving it.) I received one the other day that got the wheels spinning. It’s slightly NSFW, so I’m putting it at the end, after the jump. (Female nudity, FYI. Now you have to look, right?) I tried to find the source of the picture so I could credit them; Googling ‘naked lady logger’ retrieved everything but. (Try it, but it’s really NSFW…) So, the picture is borrowed from an e-mail from a friend, yada yada…
Anyway, back to the subject at hand: Loggers and log trucks.
I grew up in Sandy, Oregon in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was a mill town. With a population of about 1,200, the majority of the town made its living off the timber industry. There were at least three sawmills in the town proper, with others scattered around Boring and Estacada. Several small independent trucking companies lived on our road. Every morning the jake brakes and deep rumblings would call out like a heavy metal rooster. My dad was a night watchman at a sawmill, and my brother-in-law drove a logging truck for a one-man trucking company based in Oregon City.
Dad was older, in his 60s, when I would go to work with him. I loved the smell of the wood, the big sloppy mud-bog near ‘the pond,’ where logs would float until brought through the green chain and prepped for sizing. During slow periods I was allowed to watch the procedure. When it was busy I was told to “get the hell outta the way!” These logger-types were scary dudes. They said jump, I asked how far?
My favorite part of hanging out at the mill was “the burning teepee,” as I called it. Unusable scrap wood would be taken to a large burn pile and incinerated. I’d stand at the base of the burning pyre, tossing wood on and watching it catch. I’d love it when Dad would show me “how to make a real fire!” and toss various organic incendiaries onto the pile until flames would shoot thirty feet into the air. I’d inhale the smoke, loving the delicious buzz of oxygen depletion. Second-hand smoke at its finest. It helped me overcome fear of (and build a respect for) fire.
As the ’70s rolled along, the mills began closing. Dad finally retired, after the mill insisted he work the green chain, perhaps the most rigorous of jobs. An arthritic seventy-year-old, he decided it was time to call it quits. The mills weren’t far behind.
My teen years were spent around my brother-in-law, who had driven a logging truck as long as I’d been alive. His day would start at 2:30 AM, with black coffee until the last run of the day, when he would park the truck and substitute the coffee cup for a stubby of Olympia beer. (“It’s the Water.”) While his behavior would not be condoned today, my mom, a teetotaler, approved of his beer while driving. He was never drunk behind the wheel, but never without a beer either. Her theory being that all that coffee made him high-strung enough. Give the man some sedation!
I was allowed to go on runs with him once in a while. We’d trip over Mt. Hood, or up above Estacada, taking rickety roads back into the deep woods. It was scary enough without a load; attach the corpses of three or four huge trees and that ups the ante even more. We’d rock back and forth in the cab traveling down a one-lane gravel and dirt road, with me praying we didn’t tip over. It was a long-ass walk back to civilization.
Like most long road trips, there was much time for conversation and self-discovery. I’d considered becoming a truck driver; I certainly didn’t want to become a common laborer. Brother-in-law must have read my mind. He told me, “Stay in school and learn something besides trucking and logging. They are a dying breed, and you’re too smart for this.” (I took him at his word, except about the staying-in-school part. I stayed as long as it suited me.) I was surprised at how accurate his predictions were. Mills and logging trucks began disappearing from the Clackamas County landscape. Koch’s Mill, where my Dad worked? It’s now a subdivision. Oja’s Mill? There’s a McDonald’s there, last time I went through town. I haven’t been to Boring in a decade. Harris Mill? Are there any sawmills left there?
My brother-in-law had a particular hatred of the Spotted Owl. He had a recipe for cooking Spotted Owl. Here it is:
1 Spotted Owl
1 large rock
I large pot of boiling water
Salt to taste
Put Spotted Owl, rock and salt into pot of water. Boil for several hours. Drain.
Throw away water and Spotted Owl, and eat the rock.
His kids knew the push-button response just saying Spotted Owl around him would bring, and of course I would have to be a provocateur. I’d walk past him, mutter “Spotted Owl…” and let the fun begin. “Goddammit!” Slam! Bang! He’d grab a wrench and be under the hood of whatever car he was driving, cussin’ and sputterin’ the whole time.
My BIL passed away the day of the OJ murders. After his funeral, we drank forties and watched the white Bronco car chase.
Something I’m glad he didn’t see? The whole Tre Arrow spectacle, with the burning of the log trucks and the whole living-on-the-building thing. If the cigarettes hadn’t got him, this would have. Truckers are a cliquish bunch, and even rival trucking companies would have rallied around. While he never said it, I know what he would have said, in a quiet, smoke-raspy voice, and it gives me chills.
“It’s a good thing the law got him…”
People hunting for Arrow heads would not have found that one.
A while back, as I was walking through Lownsdale Square by the county courthouse downtown, I saw a fully loaded Peterbilt trying to negotiate the corner by the Portland Building. He made it in one try. How he ended up there is anyone’s guess, but he maneuvered right through, with several cops and bus drivers watching. (And taking notes, hopefully.) I miss the rumble of the jake brakes, and the road dogs with the endless cups of coffee and non-filter Pall Malls. They were a salty bunch, and I learned a lot about life hanging out with them; everything from double-clutching to what to order if I ever make it to a Nevada whorehouse. (Boys will be boys.) So far, the double-clutching has come in handy once. The other? The info is there if I ever need it.
Loggers and log truck drivers were mainly a male-dominated profession, although BIL did point out to his daughter that “Girls can drive truck too.” (She’s an ambulance driver now.) But, after seeing this picture, I begin to wonder if there weren’t more secrets I wasn’t made privy to. I know if the woods had looked like this the days I tagged along, I’d own my own sawmill and trucking company. Industry be damned!
It could explain all the beaver jokes.
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